"Mr. Raleigh," said Marguerite, "did you ever love my mother?" "Once I thought I did." "And now?" "Whereas I was blind, now I see." "Listen! Mrs. Purcell is singing in the drawing-room." "Through lonely summers, where the roses blow Unsought, and shed their tangled sweets, I sit and hark, or in the starry dark, Or when the night-rain on the hill-side beats. "Alone! But when the eternal summers flow And refluent drown in song all moan, Thy soul shall waste for its delight, and haste Through heaven. And I shall be no more alone!" "What a voice she sings with to-night!" said Marguerite. "It is stripped of all its ornamental disguises,--so slender, yet piercing!" "A needle can pain like a sword-blade. There goes the moon in clouds. Hark! What was that? A cry?" And he started to his feet. "No," she said,--"it is only the wild music of the lake, the voices of shadows calling to shadows." "There it is again, but fainter; the wind carries it the other way." "It is a desolating wind." "And the light on the land is like that of eclipse!" He stooped and raised her and folded her in his arms. "I have a strange, terrible sense of calamity, _Mignonné!_" he said. "Let it strike, so it spare you!" "Nothing can harm us," she replied, clinging to him. "Even death cannot come between us!" "Marguerite!" said Mr. Laudersdale, entering, "where is your mother?" "She went down to the lake, Sir." "She cannot possibly have gone out upon it!" "Oh, she frequently does; and so do we all." "But this high wind has risen since. The flaws"----And he went out hastily. There flashed on Mr. Raleigh's mental sight a vision of the moonlit lake, one instant. A boat, upon its side, bending its white sail down the depths; a lifted arm wound in the fatal rope; a woman's form, hanging by that arm, sustained in the dark transparent tide of death; the wild wind blowing over, the moonlight glazing all. For that instant he remained still as stone; the next, he strode away, and dashed down to the lake-shore. It seemed as if his vision yet continued. They had already put out in boats; he was too late. He waited in ghastly suspense till they rowed home with their slow freight. And then his arm supported the head with its long, uncoiling, heavy hair, and lifted the limbs, round which the drapery flowed like a pall on sculpture, till another man took the burden from him and went up to the house with his dead. * * * * * When Mr. Raleigh entered the house again, it was at break of dawn. Some one opened the library-door and beckoned him in. Marguerite sprang into his arms. "What if she had died?" said Mrs. Purcell, with her swift satiric breath, and folding a web of muslin over her arm. "See! I had got out the shroud. As it is, we drink _skål_ and say grace at breakfast. The funeral baked-meats shall coldly furnish forth the marriage-feast. You men are all alike. _Le Roi est mort? Vive la Reine!_"